 All right, so we have a quorum. So I will call the meeting to order at 9.35 a.m. So you have an agenda that is posted in your packet. And the first thing we're gonna get to on the agenda would be, what is agenda item three, which is the discussion of the OCO role in making recommendations to town council regarding town manager appointments of town department heads. And so to provide some context, especially for the public, we received from the town manager on July 9th his memo of appointment for the new director of senior services. And per the charter, the town council has a role in approving or rejecting or just letting become effective town department heads within 14 days of the town manager filing those appointments. So since it was filed on the 9th, I believe 14 days would be tomorrow. And so if the town council wants to act to either approve or reject, then it must do so at tonight's meeting. This is the first meeting that OCA has had since the town manager filed that appointment. And since OCA is the committee that is responsible for advising the council on town manager appointments is part of our role to provide a recommendation to the council tonight regarding this appointment. That said, today OCA has deliberated on a single department head, which was the director of human resources back in January, December, very early on in the tenure of this committee. And because we hadn't really had a time to figure out what it meant for us to consider an appointment, we recommended with very little deliberation. We're again in a situation where we haven't had a whole lot of time to discuss what we even look at when we're looking at town manager appointments. And yet we have to act fairly expeditiously because if we don't make a recommendation to the council and they don't do anything tonight, then the appointment just becomes effective tomorrow. So before we actually looked at Mary Beth Ogilwitz, who is the director of senior services appointment, I wanted to take a moment and hear from the committee about what you see as our role here and how we would evaluate town manager appointments for specifically for department heads. What should our discussion even look like and what should we focus on? And then I think we can move on to actually trying to apply that to the candidate herself. So it opened the floor to discussion from the committee is what you see as our role with town department heads, what we should be looking at, what we should consider when we're making a recommendation to the council. Thoughts from the committee? Darcy? I guess when I looked at the application, I had the same reaction that we've had with a lot of other appointments, which is what am I comparing this person to? And so I kind of feel like either we have a choice of either rubber stamping the town manager's picks for these different department heads or I mean, the only other alternative is really, you know, knowing what the pool was so that we can see whether this seems to be the best candidate. Okay. Other thoughts on what people see as our role in considering town manager appointments to department heads? Alyssa? So piping in as I often do as to historical perspective as hopefully all of you know, the charter has the town council do this associated with department heads. We'll talk about appointments later, committee members, but for department heads, this is a new thing. The select board had no say in department heads. There was no discussion. It was just here I hired another department head and isn't that wonderful, which is great, but there was no role at all. So I don't know anything to compare it to whereas I will have something to compare it to when it comes to committee appointments later. And coming up with what Darcy said, I am really confused about exactly how we can be a value add to this particular kind of situation. And so while I appreciate the words in the charter, I'm not sure what it actually means because obviously we're not going to be made privy to the pool. The only thing I can think of that maybe would make things feel more meaningful in terms of our participation would be if for example, the council had been comprised of the job description back when it was written because it had probably been written differently after we had someone serving in the role for decades and said, this is what I'm looking for in a new senior services director. What do you think? Does this make sense with what you've been hearing out in the community? And we said, yeah, sure, but did you think of this thing? And then the next thing would be, well, I've got a screening committee to get it. Well, does it include anybody from a group that's directly impacted by senior services? And he'd say, sure, of course it does. And there would be sort of this unfolding conversation over the course of a couple of town manager reports to the town council that would give us some insight as to where he was heading without divulging any personal information about people but was also out in the community. So that the community would have seen what the job description looked like and might have some thoughts associated that again, especially with somebody who's, we've been very fortunate of somebody in the role for a really long time prior to this and now it's a different day. If that had happened, then in theory, at this point in the process, we could say, well, remember all those things we were told, does what he's written in this report make sense in light of all those things we were told? Just like when we do our appointments and we say, well, we're setting up these various evaluation criteria and now does it make sense based on what we said we were gonna look at? But since we're, there is no conversation at this point associated with that and one certainly hopes that we don't have to hire department heads on a regular basis, right? Because it doesn't, I mean, years can go by without hiring a department head. Without something like that sort of building up of what the position is and then saying, and look how I accomplished the things I laid out that I said I would do, it feels to me like it's just, I failed vacancy and that great and I have no reason to question it. Thank you. Sarah. So I would agree with a lot of what Alyssa said and I think that even though we obviously can't do this now when we're thinking about our decision tree in the future for department heads, I think it would be thoughtful to come up with a timeline that we talked to the time manager about that ends up being written somewhere into a packet or becomes our process with him because I feel like there are things that were written into the charter that seemed to me like people were thinking I would really like this as a check and balance. I'm really thinking about this as something that helps the rest of the council then have some input on what the time manager does but again, we don't have a process so without having the process it actually doesn't work at all. So it makes sense to me to set up something like what Alyssa described similar to what we're doing when we look at appointments, having the job description, what are we looking for? What are the qualifications? And then we could make more of an actual check and balance sort of respectful decision when it comes time to do this again. Okay. I've said this before. I feel that these are his appointments and that our job is largely one of making sure a process is being followed and that we have some sense of what the process was, what he was looking for. And I don't think that it's our job to second guess his decision. I think our job is a broader one. If you have a particular department where there are issues or problems then there might be a role for us in a more oversight fashion but I really feel like these are his appointments and as long as he's clear about the process and about what it is that he's looking for and we have a clear sense of who is chosen and we have as we do always a CV or some kind of description of their professional qualifications. I think that's what I see our role is. Other thoughts on what our role is and how we should be evaluating candidates. So I've heard some idea that we need to know a little bit more information to really evaluate. I've heard that just getting this at the end of the process is maybe less useful than being somewhat involved early on and I've heard that our focus really should be was the correct process followed. So given that and given that we do have an appointment in front of us to a department before we actually discuss that appointment given that so much of what we just said was, well, if we had this, right, if we have this how do we feel or how do we wanna go about actually discussing this appointment? What are we looking for and what information do we wanna bring to the council? And the reason I say that is obviously tonight the council will ask for OCA's recommendation and if we, regardless of how we advise there might be a question as to why and if our answer is just yeah, we didn't have the information we wanted because we came up with what we wanted today. You know, I don't think that that would be something that would strengthen our committee. And so before we look at Mary Beth, what are we looking for to deliver to the council in our recommendation? What do we think is important for us to consider? I know George focused mostly on process which you're welcome to elaborate on what that means, what else are we looking for? Alyssa. So I guess I'd like to ask George more about what process he thinks was followed because all we got was nothing up until the point of actually making the appointment. So we don't know what the process was, we only know the report of the process at the very end of the process. And that initial report of the process at the very end of the process didn't even include a notice that was compliant with the charter in terms of letting people know about the vacancy when I asked for that to be provided, that was then provided. So I think that that is the kind of thing that we want for part of our process is to be able to say the packet should include this information that shows you're being compliant with the charter in terms of notifying people of the vacancy but that wasn't in there and it has since been provided upon request. So I think us saying that, and I appreciate what you said Evan about the fact that it's a little late now in terms of this particular appointment and who knows we may not need it again for two years but to be able to say what are the things we're looking for and do we expect, so aside from this particular instance where we didn't have the notice provided and I asked for it and it got provided, was there something we wanted earlier in the process? Like I was alluding to earlier, did we want a job description to be shared with the council when it was published, before it was published? At what point do we think we have something useful to add? Because to say he followed the process, if he makes up all of the process on his own then obviously he followed his own process. There's not much to stamp yes or no on something like that. So I guess I'm just asking for future. What would we have wanted the process to be not that we have per se any problem with this process at all as it is right now but what do we think we'd be doing that would be useful in future or do we take the other opinion which is that whatever he gives us is fine, who cares? And I guess part of the problem I have with that is that the words don't say in the charter don't say confirm like they used to in the Old Town Government Act for appointments. They say approve or reject. Well it seems like it would be a really strange bar that we might develop associated with what rejection would look like but approval to me feels like I'm actively doing something and I don't wanna, Bandy Semantics actually had this conversation with somebody not in town government over the weekend and they're like really confirm, approve, you're gonna argue about that? Like confirm feels like something like, sure, you did it, it's fine. Approve feels like yes, I made a positive authoritative decision on that and I have no reason to say that decision's wrong. So I just feel like the charter is trying to say we have something to say about this and to just say you wrote a nice memo at the end, it sounds good, doesn't really feel like quite enough to me. Sorry. So I'm gonna agree with Alyssa on this and I wanna make it really clear that I'm not being adversarial to be adversarial or saying that we should be the ones that are always second guessing what the town manager does, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that the charter does call for us to do something with these appointments and right now if we look at this application I would say sure, looks to me like this person has some qualifications that I in my head would think would be great for this position and it looks lovely and that's about as much as I can say, which you're right, it doesn't really necessarily say a whole heck of a lot about what OCA is actually doing. What I would maybe want to see and that we could set up is something very similar to how we sort of look at every other appointment that's done which would be having the original job posting, the job description, that would be great if it was before it was published. What was the process that was followed who was involved in the process as far as interviews and things of that nature and then maybe the pool with demographics. I mean these are all things that we have for every other appointment which we've asked very kindly for and we can ask kindly again because I realize that the town manager doesn't have to give us any of these things but I think we could then look at something, see what the qualifications were, see what the process was, take a look at the demographics. We're not necessarily wanting to nitpick everything with the town manager and say, well we want to see more and it's our decision. We're simply being able to say we're supposed to confirm. We have an idea of what the qualifications were. We know what the process was if someone asks us and therefore we can say, yeah, we confirm that because this makes sense to us rather than I think not having that information ahead of time and then basically what we are is to rubber stamp because we don't have any parameters there to really say yes or no in a knowledgeable fashion. Okay, George. This is new to the town manager as well apparently. In the past he's made his appointments pretty much without any kind of quote unquote oversight so I think this is also new for him. And to my understanding it has worked fairly well. So I'm not overly concerned and I don't feel like we need to spend hours and hours going through these appointments trying to figure out who we would appoint if we were the town manager. I hear Alyssa's point that there may be some specific things that we would like from him that he's not providing and I have no problem with that. But I do have some concern about this idea that we're going to sort of be looking over his shoulder as he makes his appointments. These are his appointments and he manages these departments, sees these departments and the people who run them. We do have a role, we're not a rubber stamp. I don't think we just sit here and go yes, yes, yes. But I think it would be a very, very unusual situation in which we would reject an appointment made by the town manager to head a department. And I would think we would have some very good reasons for doing that. So we do have a role but I think at this point we're all trying to figure out our place and our role in this and perhaps the first step is what I'm hearing from some of you which is there's some specific things that you would like to have from him that either he provided late or he didn't provide and we should perhaps come to an agreement on what those are and then present them to the town manager. But I would not be happy about using that to delay these kinds of appointments at this early stage. I think we also have a lot of learning to do. So if we can agree on what it is that we'd like as a body, as a group and then let the town manager know, then I think we'll all have a clear sense of what is being expected. But I personally do not see our role as perhaps as extensive as I'm hearing from some. It's not that we don't have a role, it's not that we don't have a place in this process but these are his appointments and he is the one who oversees these people and tries to take care of the day-to-day business of the town. Are there thoughts? Darcy? I just would add that I would agree that it would make sense to get more about demographics and what was the other thing that Alyssa said? Just more information from the town manager to just help us know that the process was followed that we want and I feel like we aren't going to be able to make a very valid decision about the actual substance of what's being put forward. So I wouldn't be opposed to our just not taking action as long as the process was followed properly. Can I just ask a follow-up Darcy? More information that the process was followed. What information is that? I didn't understand the question. So I'm trying to take notes on what everyone said and I heard from you, you'd like more demographic information and more information that the process was followed. Well, we would be able to tell that, presumably by the information that he presents. So is there additional information that you're looking for that's not in the memo? Just the demographics. Okay, Sarah. I'm not sure. I think maybe I'm not communicating well. I don't, I'm not saying at all that we should be second guessing or I think I said this this way or peering over the shoulder doing the job of the town manager at all. I guess what I'm thinking of is as what Evan was saying as chair he's gonna have to say tonight to the rest of the council, we have this person for department head and we are or are not recommending them and then he'll have to give a good reason and I can think of a certain people that whenever I would say something like that would look at me like, and what is your information? And rightly so, right? So I'm thinking of what would be the information that Evan would be giving them that we are basing this upon. Right now what I, like I said before what I can see is that if I were looking for someone, right? And we do have now the job posting we can sort of like, we can sort of put together well here's the job posting and I think this person meets them and we think the town manager has done a good job before and we don't see any problem with us, right? We could say that, but I don't know that I have a lot more than that to work with. So then I would maybe follow up with what would be the things that we would like in the future and we ask kindly as we have before the town manager for some information that when we go to the council we can say I went by this, this, this and this and I think this works which what we have been doing, right? Was the job posting which we now have a job description and again if it would be possible if you would give it to that before it was published and again another thing, number three was what is, what was the process? Number four who was involved in the process and number five what was the pool demographics and then they don't have to be, say three people, we've talked about demographics to death if it's three, we all know doing our own reports how tricky that is but it does give you some idea so then I think that the council, we could say the council tonight these are things that we think will help us make give you more information on why we said yes or no the next time we have to do this. Are there thoughts from the committee? Yes, Jerry? Should we take a few moments now and try and come up with a list of the kinds of things we're looking for even though it doesn't have to be definitive I think we at least get a start. Sarah's already mentioned some things Alyssa's mentioned some things. In my own back of my mind I'm thinking of one or two things which I think you've probably already mentioned so there's an interest in demographics there's an interest I mean clearly a job description timely posting maybe Alyssa can help me there is exactly the idea that this is posted in a timely fashion, the things aren't done we feel like we're being rushed there may be reasons I'm sure there are reasons for it but there's a sense of perhaps this is happening rather quickly and we might like a little bit more time maybe that could be phrased better how many candidates, how large the pool was and the nature of the search committee usually he forms I believe some kind of group or search committee that he works with and so a description of that. Are there other things that I'm missing or people would like to add I guess is my thought. Alyssa? I would like us to request the not the ability to all sit down and micromanage this but the idea that a job description would have been floated by us as a draft and said hey look we haven't had to rewrite this job description in 35 years so we thought it should look like this is there anything else that jumps out at people based on your experiences and what your constituents have told you and then we'd all just say yeah that looks really good and then chances are we would change nothing we would offer nothing it's not that he's asking for our approval it's just a way of engaging us in the process and then later on when the final memo came out he'd be able to say remember how I showed you the job description before it was posted remember how we post vacancy notices and compliance with the charter on such and such place remember how I said I would recruit somebody that has served on the council on aging for a long time to be on the interview team and I found somebody to do that as opposed to while I said I would do that but then time got short and I didn't ask that person to come right so it's kind of like outlining that process rather than telling us the process at the end that you followed there's no way of knowing if he complied with the process because there wasn't a process until he decided that was the process that there was so to know a little bit ahead of time what his thinking is and then to see if that plays out so again like and I actually like that example of I wanted somebody on from the council on aging I intended of somebody on the council on aging push came to shove I didn't anybody from the council on aging the interviews then we might say huh that's kind of weird because you told us that we thought that you thought that was important so that's the kind of information I'm looking forward to be able to say yes we got from point A to point B and it makes total sense and again this is hugely about yes they are his appointments and yet we have this weird check and balance thing in the charter that says this thing so to say we can't and we probably do need to at some future conversation come up with a what would be so egregious that we would reject is it simply the third white man of a certain age that you appoint as a department head as egregious or is it that you told us you were gonna do something and then you didn't do it and so we reject I mean I don't know how serious that's I mean I've seen that political play out in other communities where they've said we're not we're not proving any more of your appointments till you show us how you're doing more in terms of out you know for example and I'm not saying we're there often and there clearly was lots of advertising this is all described in the memo that he gave to us but to be able to say that you know we don't wanna play gotcha at the end we're trying to do the other thing and the other thing I wanna make sure we're clear on that I think is again confusing cause we're still new to this it's only seven months in is that when we say we who do we mean do we mean OKA or do we mean the town council because we could arguably go to the town council as OKA and say but I don't know you know you guys figure it out you tell us what you want we're not providing any leadership on this cause we got nothing I mean that would be an option I'm hoping we don't follow that but that would be an option but what we think right if because we work with him more we've asked for other things more directly the council hasn't been privy to this conversation except you know if they I have no idea how they'd be privy to it cause we're talking about it tonight so they therefore haven't heard us tossing this around so they I'm sure have the same questions we do and it's just a question of how many of them want to feel like hey I don't want to seem like I'm looking over the town manager's shoulder to say I don't know but yet I'm trying to show that the town council has a role here so I think there's the difference again just like our decision trees we have to clarify what's our role as OKA and recommending to the town council so that we don't look useless and then also for the town council to be able to tell the town council we think you should decide this not just cause we said it was good but because we think this is an appropriate thing for the town council to say is an OK thing to do so we have two ways that we have to deal with and usually they're further separated in time than today but not always Darcy? I assume we're gonna talk about the actual application at some point but I guess I'm kind of concerned about the issue of how many interviews might be conducted and I want to have information about that why if there are less than two interviews why that would be in a pool this size? So I guess with any appointment, right there's two sides to it there's the person itself who's being put forward and then there's the process that was used to put that person forward what I'm hearing a little bit from the committee is a lot more interest in OKA being a check more on the process and less so on the person and so when I was thinking last night about what criteria I would be using I said I would divide it between person and process and with person all I would do is I'd want to look at the job description and say does this person reasonably match the job description, right because I think we don't want to second guess him but also if he was putting forth someone with no experience that didn't seem to match the job description I think we'd probably say well hold on this seems a little weird and then the other side is the process which I think has to do with a lot of a list that Sarah and George gave which was was there posting was there a job description how many people were in the pool who was involved and do we feel comfortable with that and so I think the discussion we've had has been really useful in thinking about how we can look at the appointment he's put before us so we have the job description thanks to Alyssa that job description I believe only went to you and I the council I don't think has the job description because we were thinking you'd need to revise the report to add it on I don't remember if it made it up in the packet like as an addition into the council packet but maybe it did but the council didn't receive it with the memo and when he did provide it to us that didn't go to the council I don't think but we all have that at least in our packet because I uploaded all the documents into the packet so to the extent of evaluating the person I think we have the ability to look at what the job description was look at the qualifications the person has because we do have their resume and say okay does this person seem qualified or not and again I agree with George I don't think we wanna be second guessing too much we'd be looking for something egregious right so director of public works who's only ever served coffee at Dunkin Donuts would be maybe problematic with the process the question is do we have enough information and is there anything that sends up a run flag so I guess we're probably ready to turn to the actual the next part of our agenda which is actually consideration of the town manager appointment and I think we can start with process since Darcy raised the point of the interview so what was it? 20 applications, two people forwarded for interviews but only one of those two interviewed because one withdrew Darcy has some questions or concern? It just kind of stands out that only one person was interviewed of 28 applications I would have thought that when one withdrew they would find some other person in the pool at least but maybe she stood out and they didn't see any reason to do that There are other thoughts on process either things that we have questions about things that might raise a red flag or places where you wish you saw more information George? And to what we find it helpful I think I find it helpful when the town manager is present to answer these kinds of questions and that seems like to me a legitimate question to ask would be part of our process be requesting that he be present especially since these appointments don't happen that often and I realize he's busy but on the other hand I think it's been made clear at least to me this morning that we have an important role to play so part of that might be actually having him here for individual counselors if they have questions and we have one already that could be asked directly and that also would give us a sense in a formal setting how he proceeds and how he thinks about these sorts of things so are people comfortable with the idea of for these appointments in the future that we request that he be present for us to and it may only take five minutes it may take 50 I don't know or do you feel that's too intrusive? How do others feel about this? One of the questions is how do others feel about whether or not that Having the town manager present at some point in this in our procedure where we can't ask him directly questions or are we going to be okay with just sending him an email and then you know or how to how is just our secret answer to your question or any other kind of question that we might have as a committee the simplest way would seem to me to have him present for these kinds of appointments at least and we've had him present at other junctures for other appointments and I found that fruitful I found that informative so do we want to make this part of our regular procedure that what we are going to expect in future appointments that he be present here for us to ask him questions if we have any Sir So I think that a lot of this conversation it naturally good for us because it does say something about process that we have that works is that we are coming back to some things that have helped us before and I would say having the town manager here to discuss his appointments I think has been really helpful and I think it's one of the reasons why we decided for other appointments that he does that we definitely want him here so I would say yes I mean these are even bigger these are hiring department heads it's even bigger than other appointments that he makes and I would think that it would just it would not be anything adversarial it would certainly just be a way to get more information. Other thoughts? I would agree with that and I think we pretty much already decided we wanted to do that with his other appointments correct? So maybe he should just be a notice that we want him around for a half an hour around our meeting days when we're looking at his appointments you know when I looked at this there may be absolutely fantastic reasons why he was putting this person forward but the issue of the one interview popped out right away and also that you know she's one of 28 people and she has a lot of experience that's kind of peripherally related to elder services but not directly and so that would be a question that I'd ask the town manager and he might have a fantastic answer for it but it is something that you know occurred to me as I was looking at it. Alyssa? The other thing is that we could write into process and would have been a question we would have asked him if we had asked him to be here is so I think it's both yes he wants we wanted to be here but also we want to write it down so it's not just we want you to be here and we'll just ask you random things like there's specific things we want to ask you and one of them would be following up on this one person left what was the decision making process behind the fact that you were offered two finalists one with Drew we know sometimes that happens in really awkward timing sometimes like the morning of the interview as opposed to like weeks ahead of time so why did you choose to not go back to the screening committee and say was there because we all any of us who have been involved in interviews we all know that their you know layers fall out right it becomes really obvious at some point you know these five people are in this category these 12 people are here and these two or three people are four or five people are here but that doesn't mean you can't go back when you look at the balance because normally when you bring two finalists forward there's a reason those two finalists are the two finalists and so if you're now missing what that one finalist brought to the table then what was the decision to not go back was it just again what's you know following up on Darcy saying is it just this person was so obviously interestingly qualified that I was that it was so clear that this would be the person rather than just trotting somebody else out for the sake of form which we know committees sometimes do but was there even a conversation I mean was it just oh well one dropped out so now there's no further conversation so I would wanna know that as part of the process that yes I went back to my screening committee and they said you know what this is the only one left or they said no actually we think you should interview these other three people and he said now I don't want to I mean and that's his right to do that I just think it's a piece of information we should have again considering the size of the pool it's not like the pool was only three people to begin with other comments so in the past we have I don't remember if we took an official vote on it but we certainly came to consensus about requesting the town manager's presence that has been communicated to that was communicated to the town manager in a council meeting in a report I also communicated it again to the town manager in a meeting I had with him on July 1st after our last meeting my expectation because given that he knew we were debating senior center director today was that he would be present I'm realizing now I probably should have shot him an email to confirm that but it was an assumption that knowing that we've requested his presence and knowing that and him knowing that we were absolutely talking about this today he would be here I did text him he said he's at DPW he could be here for 1115 so that's about an hour from now and so the question I have for my committee at this point is are the questions we have enough to delay deliberation on this for an hour until the town manager shows up so that we can ask him or do we feel comfortable moving forward with this discussion I think that I'm very comfortable with waiting and having him here I kind of like these discussions because I often find myself changing directions but you know it's fine this is all new to everyone but I think it's also new for him and I think it maybe it would be important for us just to reinforce what I've been hearing from my colleagues that we do have a role and we take it seriously and he's learning this too because it's new for him as well so I'm like the idea of us waiting and having you all ask him questions that you want to ask him either one or two that kind of I have it back in my mind and it's so I think we should wait until 1115 and I think that also just in terms of for him reinforcing the sense that this is a new day and there's a new procedure that we're it's evolving and that we kind of expect him to be here for us to ask him questions even if it's only five minutes and that he should always assume that Alyssa I agree completely I totally appreciate that people get that you know make assumptions and we all do that and assume people will be here but I'm kind of surprised he's not here and knowing that we were also this is a second department head appointment maybe something came up things happened and he figured he'd catch us when he got back to the town hall but also because we do have his other set of appointments that he just sent us this morning to see if we would possibly be willing to work on them as a you know under 48 hours unexpected item which also happened to be related which are still out of bangs but not the same department per se and so he should be here for that too because we don't we don't even have our next for sure meeting schedule and so I would like to have him be here but I wonder if we could spend we don't spend all our time between now and then doing this but if we could spend part of our time doing coming up with our questions sort of as a group to be organized and to say these are our questions about this appointment and these are quite these are our comments about future process which we are going to put in writing at some point but we'd love to bounce them off of you right now to get a sense of how you feel about that but to separate the two things so I don't want to have one person asking about why not go back to the screening committee and then me follow up with and why didn't you ask us as per our input on the job description like that that's two different parts right because we are where we are but then for future have that but to have that preliminary conversation when he's here as well so that we can have something to write up that we can vote on future meeting and ask him to take into account like we have with with our other requests I think that would be useful so with regard to the process so nothing having to do with this in particular candidate but the process that brought this candidate forward what are our questions what are our interests we know Darcy had a question about why Darcy and Melissa about what the decision was not to bring forth other people to interview other questions I'm wondering what his vision is what is what he's hoping what's he looking for what's where's he seeing the senior center going or does is he I mean does he have any larger sort of vision for it or is he simply looking for someone who will bring something bring that to the table what so more general sort of filler I guess abstract or philosophical question of what his sense of what where he wanted the senior center to be going I assume he chose someone that he felt would lead it in a certain direction or and address certain issues so I guess that would be something I'd be like to hear a little bit about what's his vision for this department is that too maybe that's a bit too abstract I don't know well so I'm putting trying again I'm very process versus person I'm putting that under person because that has to do with what qualifications he's looking for in an individual right and building on that it also separately goes up in the process question because if no it goes involved with the variation because if he had communicated to us what he believed that vision was a couple months ago when he posted the job description back in April he could have I mean because the job description and vision aren't necessarily the same right a lot of the job description is the legalese that's required for job descriptions if he had brought us into the process as a council I'm not talking about OK as council and said these are the things I'm looking for now it's a new day and senior services have changed and these are the inputs I've gotten from our former director of longstanding and so we're thinking we're going in this direction that would have been a thing to so it's a thing to hear now associated with this person because otherwise we're just hearing a whole lot about how interesting her qualifications are but not really clear on qualifications meaning meeting that vision and but in terms of process it's understanding if you bring us into the process again not asking for our approval of your job description or even our approval of your vision but to bring us on board with your ideas then later when in the process we're able to say that makes total sense based on what he told us about his process or he's decided that what he thought in April made sense the people who actually showed up for interviews were able to do this and this is why this person actually is going to take us where we need to go for this other subset of things and this reflects again back to our conversations about appointment committee appointments of his rather than wow they have a really nice degree from a really nice institution what does that bring to this particular set of needs that this particular committee has at any given at this given moment which may be different than two years ago or five years from now and so it's both a process question for future but it's also specific on this and not picking on this individual at all it's just the way the report's written okay other thoughts on questions for the town manager regarding process or the person you put forward or things that we more information that we would like just what i had said what i had said before about what um the issue of experience in older services um what he i guess what he saw in this candidate that balance you know that weighed more heavily toward hiring her in spite of the fact that she is um weak in experience in elder services other thoughts on questions or information we're looking for for in the town manager gets here regarding the person or the process is anyone and i will see sort of building on what darsie just said when i did read the job description i thought it was interesting that working in a senior center was not one of the qualifications because had he under what elissa suggesting brought to us a job description i would have said well hold on isn't wouldn't it be beneficial for someone who have worked in a senior center um which is nowhere in any of the the requirements or the qualifications i thought was interesting um and that's when that gets back to what i said about comparing a person's uh the person's resume with the job description is when i compare the two i actually think she ends up pretty well but i was surprised at some of the the decisions in the job description um yeah elissa so following up a little and i realized with with the vacation when we don't meet every single week we don't have everything at the tip of our fingertips like we did so thanks for pulling this together is two things one is you notice that the job posting if you go back is looking for a senior center director to manage our senior center program however the appointment that's on our in front of us is the director of senior services which i would argue is slightly different right and that that partly plays into that idea one would perhaps think that a person applying to be director of senior services may have other worked in a senior center but if you're not direct but if you're saying it's a director of senior service that kind of does leave more space for it to be something else right because all the other 25 people who applied thought they were going to be senior center directors well i've never been a senior center director i guess i won't apply um you know it it is slightly different concept in the reality that's been put forward to us director of senior services which is not what the job description says it says senior center director and so i appreciate the broader view right that's one of the things i think the town has been moving toward is not being so siloed but it's not exactly the same thing so i'd like to have a question about that like that's part of that vision thing i think george we come right back to is you might have started out thinking it was a senior service senior center director but you realized as you went along oh what we really need is a director of senior services and the director part is not as critical the other part that i don't think is in the packet although i'm having some trouble with the town council pack but i'm looking at the public packet just to me that's the one that matters because i'm public sees is that the information that i requested and evan was copied on then says where this was advertised and have you guys seen that because i don't that's not in the packet and so that's something are you talking about that's that's in that old email from the town manager to me his actual email text not yeah and so and then there might have been some attachments and so i transferred all the attachments over but i think the text and so we just happy with the email over and i'll we should ask that be added to the public packet too because the other so aside from this particular individual it also should be you know part of this process that we outline is when it's a you know this is bigger than appointments to committees right this is a department head so he said what professional magazines he advertised this in i think that's worth us knowing because if you it's just like every other kind of search did you do a national search did you do an international search did you do a western math search i mean what kind of search did you do and that's information i believe as a town counselor who wasn't sitting here at oakah i would want to have and that's not in our packet right now but we'll find it um because it's it's around and so that is available out there and that should be part of our future process that we get we are provided that information in the final report information on job postings so you would say so the the memo that the town manager provided us you're saying that you would like that information from that email to be in future memos yes like standard thing we did when we hired this town manager is where did you advertise it well we put it in the beacon you know what you're now familiar with you know we put we put the advertisement different places people should know that those are the places we advertised that's part of the demographics issue in fact because that's who you reach okay other thoughts on person or process so there was some comment on only interviewing one person despite receiving 28 applications do we feel or have question do we feel comfortable with or have questions about other parts of the process such as the screening committee the people who are on it or do we feel comfortable with that so the screening committee was chaired by julie federman health center director included human resources director council on aging chair lssc director and a director of member services for the massachusetts council on aging do we feel comfortable with that do we have questions about screening committee at all seems like we do not maybe we do elissa i'd be i guess for process right and so i'm trying to understand process versus the individual right is that i have a tenant i have a i have a push pull in terms of wanting to have a relatively small screening committee but at the same time not be overloaded with professionals and so i want to make sure and so i appreciate that he the agency i'd never heard of that he brought in which was great because he obviously thought their insight would be valuable but i'm a little concerned about there being one recipient of services so to speak on the committee because there can be a really large diversity of opinion about the services that are being provided by any program and so to say we picked one feels a little about council on aging chair yeah the council on aging chair is it there's like more people from council on aging i actually mean maybe even somebody who wasn't even part of the structure so so to speak so someone who literally or if not that because again i i get you don't want to have a huge screening committee you want to have people who can commit to the time etc but if not that if not an actual recipient of services beyond the council on aging chair the council on aging is actually a separate agency required by the state that is different than just the average person who including my mother-in-law shows up for exercise class at the senior center or to get lunch at the senior center or whatever and so if instead saying you know these are the people i'd want to have together screening in the day to go through 28 applications blah blah blah but then i would want to hear that the council on aging person or one of the other people felt some obligation to do some outreach to the rest of the service recipients to say we're going to be hiring somebody is there something you've always wanted to say but you were afraid to say to the person who's been the director for 40 years or that you loved about that person that you want to make sure continues in the next person because the council on like i said that's a separate agency yeah that's not even the services that we necessarily provide and in fact there's plenty of confusion about who does what to us in the general public as to understanding those things but the council on aging is not the senior center per se and it's certainly not all the recipients of services so i'd like to know that some outreach was done to them even if it was just a quick when we did lunch we asked people for suggestions one time or something got some kind of outreach especially after somebody's been there super long time and they may want to really emphasize the strengths that person had and say we really need somebody to continue to do the amazing things that person did in this area and i also wish because now i you know i can't move here from connecticut and what they did there was really valuable and i hope you'll consider that but to say that that one person just knows that by showing up now it's entirely possible that person did do some outreach but there's no description okay so we can ask about that so what i have so far is question about why another candidate was not brought forward when one of the two people who were put forward to be interviewed dropped out a question about what the town manager's vision is for the senior center and and and how that influences what he's looking for in a person a question about pairing that vision with bringing us into the process earlier to see the job description perhaps gives some input we're looking at information on the job posting locations and the postings actually being in the report in the memo so we know what the posting was and and where it was advertised ahead of time we have a question about this person's lack of experience in your senior center and their relationship to elder services what this person's experiences bring to the department so beyond just professional credentials just how does this how does this person's experience fit with the vision that we'd ask the town manager to articulate there was some question about why it went from senior center director versus director of senior services and the question about the screening committee including someone who is not part of the existing structure who receives services or any outreach to those who receive services at the senior center have i mischaracterized any of those or are there any that someone wants to add to those Darcy it just seems like it um you know i see that there was a press release on July 9th yeah announcing her appointment and it seems like if we are going to have a meaningful part of this process that it would be nice to ask the town manager to hold off on his announcement until the town council has acted which is always just going to be a couple of weeks or around that time within has to be within 14 days so because it's unlikely that we're going to act against an appointment that's already been made public so some concern about the press release seemingly appointing someone before the council has actually acted it does mention that that it still has to go to the council but um you know it's hard to act when it's been announced publicly Alyssa so i appreciate you bringing that up because i i have mixed feelings about that one is that it's exactly true that if once somebody's been announced in the press release now the bar is that much higher for us to say yeah i don't think so um but at the same time that's also the way this form of government works uh being speaking back to george it is his appointment and so unless the town council not just okah but the town council comes up with a reason to say no that is his appointment and it's also in terms of like you know getting the person getting the you know some people wouldn't want it announced right until it was like right before our conversation because of their current employment or other possibilities but if they're ready to have people know about it then it does put it it actually very purposefully puts the burden on us to say no and i i'm although i find it difficult it it makes me feel uneasy i think it actually is appropriate because if he doesn't do that then fewer people know about it and it i think it it is not unreasonable i mean perhaps not ideal because of exactly what we said in terms of it makes our jobs more awkward but the reality is it is his appointment unless we can convince a majority of the town council it's a bad idea so for him to put it out there says well now the burden's on you i've done my job and arguably at least more people know about it this way than would know if it was just in our packet if it's just in our packet during the summer like literally nobody knows that that we'd be appointing this person and so if somebody had strong opinions about it that would actually elicit maybe some of those opinions and they would come to public comment or individually talk to us and say wow i saw that press release and i was like i got to talk to you about this so i i agree that puts the burden on us but i'm not sure that's wrong and so i'm not sure i'm willing to say that he shouldn't do it i just think we all need to understand that he's gonna that he's gonna do it and kind of and then make our peace with it or ask him not to but it is definitely a different part of doing things than one might normally expect darcy i guess i feel like it's our job to try to maintain our part of the process and not worry about his and that if we feel like it we can do our job better without the early announcement then we should ask for that he may he may very well say you know i'm still going to do this but it seems to me appropriate for us to ask for it because that would help us do our job other thoughts on process or a person qualifications that we want to ask the town manager when he shows up elissa if i could just follow up quickly i want to so darcy and i are in disagreement and that's totally fine but i think that's something that actually could be mentioned in your verbal report tonight as an example of things we're sorting through because we could take a vote and see how it turns out obviously and again like darcy points out the town manager could do whatever he's gonna do but i'm by the end of my long protracted speech i came up with the idea that in fact it actually was to our advantage to let the public know even though it made me uneasy to have him do it ahead of time versus it makes our jobs more difficult because if by if we would if we ask him to withhold it fewer people know about it and that seems less helpful to our process but we can we can totally agree to disagree on that i'm just saying this is an example of a we don't know the right answer to this question and we're going to sort through after we get some answers to his questions when he gives us some answers today and then we have our discussion tonight at town council and then the next time we come to oko we may you know we may go one direction or another but i don't think we have to decide on that right now but that is a good interesting point of disagreement at this point sarah so i guess for me this comes back to we may never do this process again but for the interview designate from oca going to interview people and then bringing back their recommendations um there was some discussion that we had that once those recommendations came back to us and we felt since uh people had been informed that it's possible that they could be appointed that then if their pressure was on on oca and to say yes and i i think it was that we all established the fact that if that were the case and we allowed that to happen then we had therefore effectively taken out any kind of check and balance there was so i can see elissa's point in that if the town manager's appointment does go out ahead of time i would agree if the um it would give the community at large a chance to sort of digest that themselves and people who would apply to a digest that themselves and then um have a chance then to come forward and say wow i think this is great or someone could say i have a really big problem with blah blah because of and i also think that this council has to work with the town manager be respectful to town manager we ask for that in return but i i don't think that either the town manager needs to feel like everything he does um town council has to ratify completely and jump up and down and say that's great nor do i think that that we need to do that with the town manager there are definitely respectful ways to disagree sometimes and to work out a different solution and i don't i think we should try to make sure that we stand up for not having that pressure just to say yes other thoughts all right so i think this was actually very useful um so we have several questions or comments for the town manager for when he arrives hopefully shortly after 1115 which is a half an hour from now uh i think we also have probably a better understanding at this point about uh what we're looking for when we're evaluating candidates or when we're evaluating town manager appointments to department heads with regard for the information we're looking for from the process both what should be included what questions we might have and also questions i would have about the person so i think that we can have a good conversation about the person the town manager has put forward but it makes sense of course to have that conversation when the town manager is present to answer some of the questions that have already been brought up so i was just gonna ask what did we end up saying about demographics because i know we've gone around and around and around on this but when it comes to a pool of 28 it seems entirely fair to give us something on a pool of 28 and so that's both i think and i don't want to speak for you darcy but i think that that's not only appropriate for this particular question for today for for this person what were the demographics for the pool of 28 but also for the future process question is coming up with some sort of understanding as if there's three people applying i am not gonna say much but if there's 28 or 50 people applying we could give those demographics because that's not likely to be personally identifiable and cause a problem and it will be really interesting to know if all 28 who applied were women i mean that that is worth knowing as a piece of information and so i think that's both specific to the person and also a process okay all right so i think we've exhausted agenda item three agenda item four we're waiting for the town manager to be present taking things a little bit out of order just because we've so thoroughly discussed this i'm wondering if we can now go and do public comment in case anyone in the public has any thoughts on what we've just discussed for the past hour and a half so is anyone here to give public comment okay so come up uh it's all useful so just need your name sure my name is mark parent and i'm chair of the zba and i'm here representing the committee as a whole after an administrative meeting we voted to have an opportunity to present our view to the committee this committee relative to the failure to appoint keith langsdale to a position on the zba keith is the is one of the most senior and most experienced people on the committee and spend hours and hours working for the town in that capacity and was probably most likely the next chair in the committee for the committee the failure to appoint him to a full position eliminates that experience going forward we are not clear on and appointing even now appointing him to a an alternative position doesn't fix the problem immediately we are bound to use our full members for every panel we don't select alternate members just as a matter of course when we're viewing special permits if in fact a full member is not available then an alternate fills the slot the we're not clear on the committee's decision or the reasoning for the failure to appoint and bring someone new in if it was to bring a new perspective on to the committee and new blood then it's important for me to share with you the role of the zba in the in the process of special permits so that you understand better that personal perspectives are not part of the zba we are a quasi judicial body set up under chapter 40 40 a of the commonwealth laws and we we are mandated to follow the bylaw the bylaw is what determines our actions we are interpreting the bylaw when it's not clear to people but we do not make rules we don't put our we work very hard at keeping personal perspectives out of the decisions this is a common misconception oftentimes when we're faced with i'll use an example a two-family home someone asking for a special permit for a two-family home especially one that's not on our occupied we we always shouldn't say always we most often see a vast majority of the neighbors out posing the special permit for that two-family home because of the issues that we've had in town relative to student housing i can tell you that in at least six different occasions when public outcry has been significant and opposed to the special permit after we've heard their comments and we make sure that we hear all of the issues that they have with the with the property we explain to them that the special permit is their friend not their enemy this is there are two elements of a special permit there's the use of the use and the use of the use so the use itself is a two-family home is a two-family home appropriate in a neighborhood if there are other two-family homes in that neighborhood then clearly it's appropriate the second part of that is how it's used and how it's used is mandated and controlled by the conditions that we apply to the special permit hearing the concerns that people have about the previous use we applies conditions that ensure that the future management of that property is done in an appropriate manner and i will tell you that without without question people have gone away and changed their position and said no we need a special permit and make sure that there are conditions in place that all of that process comes with experience and over time i served on the committee i haven't served on the committee for 12 years and i'm in my last year at the request to continue when the committee went from three to five it's a a challenge to manage three you know it's a challenge to manage five especially in the process of of the zba so i'm offering all of this not for two purposes one to make sure that if there's an opportunity to reconsider keith as a position even in an alternate it would be beneficial to the town to have his experience and two as you're faced with future appointments to the zba understanding the role that we have and the elimination of personal perspective in the process is very critical if you want something done different in town now i'm addressing the broader town council if you will if you want something different in town than what you're getting now it's a bylaw change not a change to a committee especially the zba if you're unhappy with the way things are run in a neighborhood because of uses it's a bylaw change that needs to be put forward and they should be put forward in a manner that's in concert with the history and the process of the zba i will share with you and i've shared it many times there is and i'm going to go to the planning board to apply or encourage them to change one of the bylaw provisions i'll do that after i'm off to zba but the bylaw provision that has a use expire on change of ownership within a certain district within town was put forward by town meeting member with some statistics that led you to believe that the fix was in owner occupancy not in the use itself it was misconceived it's not in the best interest of the town uh non-owner occupancy or owner occupancy does not fix a problem with a property it is the conditions that you can apply to a special permit not the expiration the expiration of a of a use saying no longer is a two-family home when somebody tries to sell it is detrimental to the town people won't invest in a two-family home if they know their use of a two-family home is expired and i know this is more information that you probably wanted but i'll restate the the original content intent here was to reconsider teeth as a position on the zba and to consider the actual operations of the zba when uh pointing new members going forward and i'd be happy to answer if anybody has questions i'll probably overstay my welcome as it is okay thank you thank you for your time any other public comment okay so agenda item five is consideration of town manager appointments to multiple member bodies filed with the town clerk uh the town manager has filed with the town clerk uh board of health appointments which i believe i added to your packet this morning cool um so my question first for the committee uh i have had the town manager was nice enough to give us uh on oca a very small advance on these um my understanding per conversation with him was he was going to file these mid last week um that didn't happen uh so we have the option given that they were filed this morning we do have the option of taking these up on our august 12th meeting for the council to act on at their august 19th meeting and still be within the 30 days um that said i would expect uh given a conversation i've had with the town manager that we likely will get um a fairly substantial number of appointments possibly another four before the town council's august 19th meeting uh that we might want to act on and so the question is um we can discuss these board of health appointments um today and vote on them today we can discuss them today um but perhaps hold off on voting until um august 12th or we can vote on them today um they're not on the agenda for the council tonight but they but we could talk to i could talk to them um but the question for the committee is have you had time to look at these and do you want to discuss them today or do we want to take one George i have looked at them and i would like to discuss them if the others are willing i think there are two issues here that i'm concerned about one is the importance of being able to have a quorum this committee is struggling with that and secondly i believe the state law requires their charge or their charge whatever requires that there be a medical doctor um on be someone with an md on the board of health and at the moment they do not have that person um and so one of the appointments one of the new appointments is an md so i think there are two reasons um that i would put forward for us both to talk about this today if people are willing and actually to vote on it um rather than wait until august 19th okay do you have others looked at this do we feel comfortable discussing these today also so i'm not a big fan of doing something with relatively short notice and having to do that unanticipated because the names were the names themselves were unanticipated but given the upcoming workload and given that we already have the town manager here and we can ask him any questions about these individuals about or about his appointment process it seems like we could just go ahead with it tonight and truly we are at a transition phase in our appointment process and so i'm not feeling as beholden as i was when we had our own appointments like we do for tonight for finance committee um to our process associated with his appointments which again are approved and reject and so although for our appointments as a town council i would never say let's just give them a verbal report tonight and they can work with it um for except for the one we're actually going to do that with tonight because the 14 day notice i'm babbling um i think it's fine to go ahead with these today because i don't think we're going to learn anything between now and then so i'm fine with doing that and again having the opportunity to ask him a question because we know he'll be here today i think is helpful okay so then with that so the town manager has filed with us names for board of health there are three names uh steven george who is a reappointment a reappointment for a three-year term moraine melea for a two-year term and timothy randier for a two-year term we have profiles um we have fairly thorough profiles for the two new members we have a fairly sparse profile for the reappointment although it does provide at least professional credentials we have a summary of the process questions greater information that we're looking for given that the town manager will be here hopefully in 15 minutes george i happen to know steven george personally i don't know if that's really relevant but i'm deeply impressed by his commitment to the board of health so at least i can speak to that he takes very seriously his responsibility so while his description here is not lengthy he has already served for three years and my personal impression is one of someone who takes it very seriously and so i would certainly add my personal endorsement to his reappointment for what that's worth so well we're talking about descriptions of people who are reappointments you know i think that we've all done a good job at least one of us has known someone who's been for reappointment but what i think is interesting is usually one of us can say something more than what's in the description of what we know about the person so again i would like to maybe see a little bit about like some highlights of things it doesn't have to be but i mean just some highlights of things they've done or it has shown you know george would you add anything for you just think this person's no to be like hard working and and earnest or the kind of person that that if you put on a board or committee in this town would would show up at every meeting and would take his work seriously and but no i can't speak to a specific but even that would be i feel like it's great to know because i mean that was one of the things that we talked about for people being on committees them carrying their workload you know and always being at meetings and or always being thoughtful in discussion so i'm just gonna be a pain and say that'd be awesome if we saw something like that from down and and thank you george elissa so again process versus these people right so i guess it's process which is knowing more about these individuals i don't care how long that someone's been a member of the board of health and that we think they should and they should just get reappointed it's i want to know what they brought like they attend every meeting and they helped spearhead such and such project or they encouraged people to come to a particular forum that was really valuable because it helped us rewrite this particular regulation or something not just they show up they do their work their what does competent mean i mean it should say something and if you can't say something about somebody then why do you think they should be reappointed just because they've been sitting there for three years and they want to do it again so that's my that's my base disagreement and george and i disagree on this which is that i don't think just showing up is necessarily enough i think that we need to both on the one hand say thank goodness we have volunteers and on the other hand say but what are they bringing to the table and so i have no problem whatsoever with the reappointment of seaman george that is not the question here it's being able to provide a description and i think part of the underlying problem it reflects back to my frustration that there is the refusal to interview people who are already in the slot i would much prefer to see interviews done of the person who's already there especially given that in some cases as these appointments play out this particular town manager has never met this person unless they happen to talk to them on the phone or happen to show up at a meeting because they weren't part of the initial appointment process so this is not blaming this particular town manager it's saying that players change and so or the department had to be able to say yes this person has been a really valuable addition or this person we are not talking about any of these individual people we're talking about hypothetical people this person has been really challenging to work with but they represent a constituency that i don't think i would hear from otherwise like those kinds of things maybe wouldn't want to phrase that in a written document but something like that that shows me why we are doing this rather than they did it for three years nobody's making overt complaints so we'll just go ahead and reappoint them that frustrates me in terms of what we're trying to come up with in terms of committees moving forward and it also frustrates me because it means that when you say you have committee vacancies you should be really upfront about the fact that there's no vacancy for the spot of somebody who's already been there because you can't get into that spot because that person's going to get automatically reappointed because they don't even get interviewed so i'm just uneasy with the underlying assumption that which i think i we're hearing regularly like we're so glad so many people want to be involved well so am i but that doesn't mean that all belong in some particular committee appointment we need to find good fits for people and i hope we find good fits for everybody but i don't understand why somebody who's already there just is automatically assumed to be a good fit and nothing against any of the people who are on this particular body which i appreciate all their work and i don't want them mad at me because they have a lot of individual power so as a board so as the board of health they get to do a lot of things without anybody else's say so i don't need any of them cranky at me but it's it's awkward and so i think that's part of the underlying thing right so if i knew that all these people were getting interviewed right and said yep given where we are right now i would be much easier with having less information on the report or if i knew it had been made clear that automatically we are going to reappoint people who and so therefore they're really only x number of openings so don't bother to apply if you think you're going to be one of 70 people applying yet we wish um that's the kind of concern i have is process wise that because we don't have that underlying process that means i want more words in this or one way or the other sir so i agree with alissa 100 percent i guess what i was saying i guess i just came at a much gentler way because i haven't had as much caffeine but that's i i do agree with alissa because i i do agree with the point that she's made consistently that just because someone's been on doesn't automatically mean unless we want to come out and just say you know uh one term is three years and you're automatically going to be on for six and we just go with that like just say it if that's what we are saying but i would rather as alissa said take a look at the end of someone's term interview everyone and then see what they bring to the table and again i do want to see you know what amazing things this person did um on the committee and and that's why they're still like excited to be there and that's why they also deserve a spot george first of all i'm deeply wounded that my my word is not sufficient should guarantee someone's bona fide bona fide but over passing by my my wound um i wouldn't say i disagree 100 percent with alissa and with sarah but um maybe 75 percent i do feel that if you've gone through this process once and you have been approved that i think it's not unreasonable to have the assumption that if you wish to continue serving um and i would also add that well that you should there should be an assumption that you would you can continue or you should continue um i think the town has always struggled as i think many towns do to get people involved and keep them involved and if someone has served on a body um and wants to continue to be involved um the idea that somehow we're going to re scrutinize them again as if they were complete newbies um this i think a little sends a message and maybe it's a message that this body wants to send it's not a message that i'm particularly eager to send i want to encourage people to be engaged and active um and not uh well so i guess i do have that assumption um that i would never put in writing nor should we but i think that um if you are serving on a body and you would like to continue serving and i i would assume also that that there would be some input from the chair right now that gets tricky if it's the chair and alissa would point that out quickly but um so this is not i won't go died i won't go to the mat on this but i i do think that i have personally the uh feeling that i have this feeling that if you've served for three years and your up for reappointment um that that you get some bonus points for that i guess certainly sir so i just want you to know george said because you personally said that it was okay i remember i did say then that good for me so yeah someone finds my word it's absolutely okay to disagree with me at any time and i think that my my saying this also comes from being on committees for many many years and i think you know i think it all depends and and i think it's okay to say yes when it's right and i think there are some times when maybe you should just you ask someone is there a different committee you'd like to to serve on so i mean i think there's there's a fine point there but i appreciate your opinion that's super fast i wouldn't at all treat them as complete newbies george come on come on you know i'm not treating them as complete newbies that's a completely different why are you so that that's not what i consider the interview process to be for it's not to it's look at them look at their experience that's probably pretty amazing experience that outweighs replacing them with somebody else but let's find out by doing the actual interview and that's even assuming we do interviews right so that you know there's that whole conversation we had in the future but i don't see i you absolutely do give them the benefit of the doubt by the fact that they're coming in with all this experience and that was actually one of the things that was disappointed and that we will have the future conversation about process around our cif obviously doesn't capture what we wanted to capture in terms of when we did have people reapply for the things we were appointing here as town council they didn't tell us enough about their accomplishments to actually make that get credit as opposed to being treated like a newbie off the street who knows nothing about anything all right so to be respectful of the town manager's time um let's return to our discussion of director of senior services appointment hi Paul hi thank you for coming in um so in our discussion of your appointment for director of senior services we found ourselves with a number of questions and also perhaps some requests i've written them down but would probably prefer not to read all of them to the town manager so if folks want to what do you want me to all right um so we divide these up between sort of the process to bring forward someone and and uh evaluating an appointment an appointment um so starting with the process there was a question about why uh when only two people were brought forward from the pool and one with drew uh there wasn't any decision to bring forward um another person uh what was the conversation behind only interviewing one person when the other interviewee uh withdrew so i had i met with the inter these absolutely interview team that did the initial interviews they were comfortable with bringing two people forward um and they didn't think anybody else would should be brought forward because they wouldn't have recommended them so to to bring forward someone just to bring them forward they didn't seem it didn't resonate with the interview committee because they were not recommending them and um it was not a um giant pool and so they felt bringing the two and then one person took another position and i did struggle with that because i don't like having just one person to interview uh this person uh that i'm recommending uh or very very referred to you uh was um was sort of knocked my socks off i think she was um did really well and i felt comfortable pushing her forward um part of the calculation also was um filling a position where the previous person had worked for the town for 47 years and um knowing that whoever was going to take on that task was going to have a pretty big challenge in terms of making change and i felt this person uh in particular would be very adept at managing the change that was going to happen because change was going to happen no matter what we weren't always going to be doing it the same way and i felt like she was very strong in that in that regard um had i felt it'd been a marginal call i probably would have gone out and re-advertised uh position okay uh while we're on that does anyone have any follow-up questions on that in particular no no okay uh so there was a question about and this is a little bit of a broader question about um sort of what you saw uh where you saw the senior center was going with the vision of the senior center was given that we just had someone retire who had served there for so long um and how um that informed both what you were looking for and the experience that you saw this person bringing to the department so i mean one of the things i've said for the last couple years is wanting to become more of an age-friendly community and what does that mean it means we're more attuned to people who are aging in place you know who are who are experiencing dementia but want to be able to live at home um providing transportation to people who are having challenges with transportation because that becomes a big issue for people living in a home transportation is probably the number one challenge for seniors and being able to get get around um so the traditional senior center is important but i don't see a building being built in the foreseeable future when we see all the other needs so having someone who's looking at the array of services that we needed to provide and someone who had um she uh had experienced it herself with her parents um was was pretty powerful to me so in terms of where the senior center is going i think it's more about policy orientation in terms of what we're what we need to be offering as a community and also um recognizing that the traditional idea of senior citizens isn't what this town is going to be embracing uh people are here um totally engaged and active and move here because they want to be living in an active community where people over 55 over 60 over 65 over 70 want to be involved in and in things want to be act physically active and providing the resources for them to be able to to do that so i was uh in sync with what Mary Beth uh wish what the way she visioned uh where we she thought a senior center would go and she was very creative in some of her thoughts on that can you there was a building on that there was some question about uh her seeming lack of experience in the senior center with elder services so it's possible to build on that yeah so that was that was a challenge because she um there weren't a lot of people out there and you'll know i think southampton and hadley both have vacancies now in their senior director of senior services positions they've just announced the reservation or the retirements of their people um so i thought uh she has not run i had concerns in some sense she had not run an organization like this um she had not had um terrific experience with supervising people and that was concerned um but her strengths uh far outweighed those and i also felt that where she was weak we could coach her and had could mentor her on some of the things like on supervising individuals we have a lot of support for something like that um and i also frankly wanted someone to be thinking outside the box on um on senior services and not say this is the way this town did it so we should do it that way too we certainly want to learn from other communities but um i think we're gonna be blazing our own path in a lot of ways on these on this issue okay and i think she was very open and eager to be in that role there any follow questions from the committee on either the points of the vision of the senior center how that informed what the time and you're looking for or this candidate's experience george it sounds like that the committee that was doing this search for you and you shared a common vision do you feel like that you were on the same page um and maybe that explains why 26 of the 28 candidates didn't make the cut or is it they were they were all over the map so it's not there's no single but i guess i want to get a sense from you that that this vision that you're starting to to shape for the senior center is not just your personal vision but it's actually being informed by uh those that you've put together there's been a kind of conversation back and forth or or or no yeah so so the the interview team that um had a lot of the same visions um i i can't say exactly that they all you know i can't speak for them honestly um and i guess your question is okay so if you had that vision is that what knocked out the other candidates that did not rise and i think that that wasn't the situation i think that the the committee that reviewed them just didn't think they were at the quality or level of being a director of for the town of amherst you know the department head great other follow-up questions on this candidate this appoint appointees uh experience or how that fits in with where the senior center senior services are going so there was one one question about and also maybe some concern about the fact that all of the job postings were for senior center director um we're now calling it director of senior services which sort of make and so there was there was some question about whether whether there's a feeling that perhaps people who had not had experience in a senior center might not have applied who who would have maybe been better been okay with a broader senior services i think that's what that's a really good point i don't know the answer that's uh so the the concept would be that some people might have said oh i don't want to run a building that's not what my forte is i'm really into it might have yielded that but i think most people would if they're in the field they would know what um you know amherst provides i i just you know not really sure how that would impact the applicant pool but i think it's a pretty sharp uh perception object observation any follow-up on that question i'm not looking at you answer your question yeah i mean you out yes um well i mean right we don't know what we don't know and i appreciate that things evolve over time that even as the interview team was discussing it with you it may well have been that it became clearer that this is the vision that you had and so that's actually connected to one of our later process questions associated with vision and the town council at some point in the process but in terms of answering this particular one it it was an evolution it sounds like so another question we had regarding so those are all sort of our this individual questions regarding the process so there was some there was some conversation we didn't see the job description until after we got the the appointment um and there was some discussion that that we had in our conversation about how we even what our role is with department heads and what we're looking at and what we should be looking at there was some discussion about oka perhaps being involved earlier in the process and seeing the job description earlier and having an opportunity to sort of provide input not telling you what would be in the job description i want to make that clear but some some idea of knowing upfront what the vision of any position any department head would be and how that's influencing the job description and bringing the town council in as part of that to perhaps provide input based on you know what we know of of the community um and i think that's you know that's a hindsight question of you know would it have been useful for the town council to understand sort of what you just told us about how you see senior services in Amherst being so much more than just the senior center um early on and us being able to to look at the job description and get a feeling that that vision was reflected within it yeah so i guess that really is leads to a conversation about what is you know the council's role in in approving or not approving or not taking action on appointments and is it to just sort of say this person seems to meet the standards that we expect for a town or is it you know you know there's a relatively short time frame for your your action on these types of things which um on these individuals so i guess it's the bigger question is at what level of detail does the council expect to be involved within the administration of the government and i think that's definitely a conversation that that will evolve and we should continue to have i mean i think the the charter does presume that if there's a reorganization of government that that's a that's a conversation that council should be involved with in terms of um you know job descriptions for department heads i don't know if that's how i wouldn't read the chargers having the council be involved at that level follow-up comments on that you are right this is a much bigger conversation but this is a good example i think of how the choice of a department head is being shaped by a certain vision of where you want that department to go what you wanted to do and i think it's valuable for us first of all to hear that from you but also perhaps to be part of that conversation is this where we want the senior senate to go is this our vision of what we see coming in the future i would suggest it probably is i think this but that's i think i think there we might have a role to play but certainly hearing from you at least what you have in mind at least for this particular department and what you're thinking was um is helpful to us and also may also be a place for a back and forth that some in some way or other other follow-up comments questions on this aspect of process job description involvement of the council elissa so one of the things we talked about was and i don't want to jump ahead so excuse me if i'm out of order but the in terms of the process in terms of job description etc one of the things we talked about and and i'm hearing what you're saying about how much is the town council involved but as was described just in terms of more of bringing the town council whether it's at the oca level or the full town council level more on board with where you're trying to go so that by the time you got there at the end we'd be able to say yep that so makes sense he told us back in april he originally thought of it this way then he thought of it this way these were the people he included on his interview that represent these constituencies yep i see how we got to the end of this road whereas instead and again because this is new to all of us including you means that to have to tell us anything other than what happens at the end is if when it just comes at the end it makes pretty much no sense for the charter to say approve or reject because based on what i mean we can't say that you followed a process when there wasn't a process we knew anything about until the process we were told at the end was the process that was undertaken you're obviously not going to write a memo to us that says well i thought my process should be this but i decided to do something else because that would be the only way we'd be able to then say oh you didn't follow your own process like it doesn't compute and while yes we're not supposed to micromanage and yes this isn't to the level of reorganization what we're trying to figure out not so much for this appointment but for future appointments which who knows maybe it'll be you won't be yours the town clerk but to do to do this in future is for us to understand how do we get to this point rather than so that we can feel like we fulfilled our obligation of saying approve or reject because otherwise it feels a lot like he just does what he does and now we just let things go under what circumstances would we reject i mean it's hard to imagine the memo you would write to us that we would say absolutely not unless it was as we discussed before you got here some sort of the political machinations you see in other communities around diversity for example where people say oh it's not about that person but i'm not proving anything else until you do this that or the other thing and it's held that way which is not something we're trying to recommend to anyone but in order to say that we don't have any role except to approve or reject but we don't have anything to base that approval and rejection on and so that's why we're looking for things like if you would consider in the future and we would talk more about this in the future um being willing to at least describe hey this is what i'm thinking of for a job description let me know if you have some thoughts about that not that you get to decide you get to decide because that's your job um and then also to make sure to provide us with all the postings that went out to show that we complied with the charter in terms of the vacancy notice etc to not have to ask for those and then also to add on the additional part about you like where you advertise because that speaks to diversity as well and i know we're going to have a demographics question in a minute but where you advertise obviously also has some impact as to where people will know about it even though in this case as is probably the case with most of our department heads it's kind of a small pond that a lot of people circulate in within any particular state so i think the charter is pretty clear about where the hiring authority lies with the town manager this one is called out differently for department heads where the council has a role if it chooses to exercise it um and but it doesn't provide any guidance on what that role is i mean it could be as as limited as being this person is wholly incompetent and they happen to be related to you that's why you're pushing them forward you know it could be as low as low to the low bar as that or it could be you know we expect to see all the applicants and you know all the criteria it could be a range right that's that's the range and that's where we're having the conversation um where i would land on this is that the the council presumes that the manager is responsible for hiring his team and unless there's something untoward um and i i don't know if i agree that it's even necessarily your role to say did you comply with the charter or the posting requirements because there's a lot of things that we have to comply with in terms of you know hiring people did you do a quarry check did you do all these things it's like i don't think that that's the council's you know the elected legislative bodies role to to be at that level of detail um i think it's totally responsible for you to say did you meet all the requirements required to be able to hire this person and to have the town manager respond yes or no um but um but i think that again i think that's we're a shared government we want and i'm subservient to the council so um but there's certain responsibilities that the manager has so i want to so when i have this conversation in a more comprehensive way i think maybe i'd retreat or wherever in terms of how do you see the role of the council because it's your exercise you can exercise your authority and i think you can you know you can say until we get this stuff we're not approving anything and we have that power and that's a very large power that you have so it's not um my way or the highway type of conversation it really is a conversation and help where's that where's the right place to be because i don't think that you would expect or the public would expect the town manager has unfettered sort of whatever they want because that's why they put this in the charter they want someone to say to double check at this level of department had appointments is it the right place and how we look at that is that's what that's the conversation we're having right now i guess George i'm gonna give a concrete example just for people to think about and for for paul think about too you mentioned uh we're going to be appointing or right the clerk of the council or i'm sorry the the town clerk right and um we live in a college town and so a question i would have um and i assume that that that paul would too would be what would be this person's uh thoughts about college students and young people voting um what's is that something that they would be interested in that they would write and so if we had a candidate before us and um that was put forward and they seemed indifferent to this or had no ideas or thoughts about how to further engage students um that would be a case where i might think you know i don't think i could approve this person not because they're not necessarily qualified but because um given the town we live in and given um at least my sense that this is a very important issue i would expect that a clerk um the town clerk would be for this town would be someone who would have a special interest or at least some thoughts about um how to engage and to reach out to students in terms of um elections and so forth so that would be for me an example maybe that's just my particular twist but that's an example of some an appointment where it's more than just qualifications person's perfect qualified um but here's something that i consider a really important issue and i wonder what they think about it and um if i wasn't impressed by the responses i would have some reluctance yeah that's a really good example i think uh and each department would have something like that right um each department head and articulating what those values are through the search processor and there i see a role for the council or at least for this body and i assume for the council as a whole um other than just qualifications yeah so i think my thought we got maybe a little hung up on the idea of the the job description of the job posting um it wasn't for that you would bring your job description and we would like red pen it right um that would be absurd um but in what you did like 10 minutes ago and describing your vision for senior services in amerson how that's different that was like super useful and helped me understand the context of what you were looking for in candidates and and why you brought forward this candidate um and i think it would have been perhaps useful to have had that conversation because also what you said i mean it wasn't in your memo i mean you have this vision that i assume most of the council is unaware of but is very useful to know and very interesting um and i think what i was envisioning with this and you know the committee might not might be in slightly different places um was having that conversation when a vacancy occurs of okay so there's a vacancy we're going to hire someone uh here's my vision for what this position would be you know what do you all think and that might inform the job description so it's not that you would come here with a job description we'd say no you have to do this or this it would be you know um because if you came here for senior services and you said yeah we want we need someone to to run the senior center and make sure they turn the lights on they'd be like okay well maybe there's there's more we can do right um and that that kind of conversation before um everything goes out i think would be useful because it helps especially i think in our role and what we see ourselves which is here to represent our the communities in our district um it might be you know we might also have some information on you know things we've heard from people of well it would be really great if the town clerk also you know what george was saying with um with engaging student voters right i mean it you might come in here with your vision of town clerk and george might say well but you haven't talked about this and that's something that would be really important to us and then maybe that becomes part of the screening or part of the job process i think that's what we're envisioning a little more than micromanaging the job process but sort of that that vision and how that informs selection of candidates earlier in the process i think that's excellent and i think you say job description but i don't think we're really talking job description because that's kind of a static thing that lives exactly job to job what you're thinking i think what you're identifying are the qualities or the recruitment vision that you have um so while we're on it are there other things for the town clerk i mean let's do it i mean let's let's i mean i thought those are those are really good ones um some of it is is it will be constrained by the applicant pool you might not get everything but it's always good i mean in any recruitment i had to say what the expectations are um or for what what you want them to be focused on so people know what the values are um so the things that we have talked about for this is is you know engaging college you know college age and younger younger adults in the in voting process being involved in this in the census that's a major task for the um and being making sure that um residents of amherst fully participate in the census um trying to you know being welcome and being excited about uh in introducing ranked choice voting and being willing to do the education piece of that those are some of the the sort of things that we had identified for the clerk's position because you can't have someone coming in who's not interested in those things because that's the key part of their jobs but i don't would we change the job description maybe for some of them but not so are there other things that for the clerk's position what are we doing or do you want to think about it you know i haven't had much time to think about this yeah i mean i think that's a conversation and and i would loathe to have it at a retreat i think it's a conversation that belongs fully out of regular town council meeting where the public can can have us doing and it's a directed conversation by the town manager saying you're not red penning my job description but you know tell me more about the insights you're hearing and job descriptions are fairly rote and don't necessarily include all of those things but job descriptions are not the only thing there are of course profiles that go with job descriptions and so the nice little header about what a great team it is to work for is not necessarily written in the legal ease of the job description but is something that is also put out there and so you can capture more of that in not necessarily the number of words you've paid for in a publication but when people ask for more information so it's it's more the profile i think of what we're looking for for somebody although of course that word has many negative connotations now but the vision the qualities that you're looking to evaluate them on that's one of the things we keep talking about for the appointments too right like what did you look for when you came up with these people so we might have a handout that says like we developed for zoning board of appeals this is what the zoning board of appeals does so the person knows what they're signing up for but beyond that like what what qualities are you looking for to make for this particular town clerk in you know 2019 2020 what does that look like versus just having the technical skills and having the right certifications because there could be plenty of those people who have zero interest in dealing with college students and that we would want to not want to necessarily let them rise very far to the top if that was true and so we have your back from that standpoint too to say this is what we're looking for so then when you write the memo back to us we say remember how you told me you wanted this well here's what you got and and turned out almost nobody was interested in that but luckily we found this person who was follow any further comments on that all right a couple things so Alyssa you mentioned I think already job posting locations being in the memo since that's always useful to know who what what people might have been seeing it there was comment on the screening committee and question a desire to see people who receive these services on the screening committee outside just the normal structure and also curious about whether there was any outreach to those who receive services to ask like you know what do you think senior services in Amherst need what did what did Nancy do really great that you want to make sure carries over were people who actually receive the services brought into this process at all so the the first question is so having other people on this screen the screening committee then the people who are on it I guess is I'm trying to figure out what that piece was so it started we were talking about the screening committee and and the thought was it's useful to have people on the screening committee for a position like this who are people who actually utilize these services and and doing so outside just say someone from COA the question became well since we didn't necessarily see that was there any outreach then to people who use the senior center or any of the affiliated programs to see sort of what they feel like a senior center or senior services director needs or want what they want or again given that Nancy did it for so long is there anything that they were like you know she always she did this really well and needs to continue was there any outreach yeah I think that the members of the screen committee did talk to a lot of people but not in any formal way where they were there where the public was invited to come in weigh in on what we'd want for the next director senior services or whatever senior center director so we did not do that piece and we have not done that for the town for exposition either any follow-up questions or comments on that there was a question about demographic information there's a feeling that a pool of 28 was large enough that it it would not be identifying to provide demographic information but we there was none provided I can get that to you okay and then the last discussion we had was about and this was one in which the committee was not necessarily in agreement was about the release of a press release prior to council action and whether or not that sort of should it should have waited until after the council acted so when when I file it at the town clerk and with the council it becomes a public document the press has it already whether we control the message or they just do their own start contacting people on their own they're going to do that it's at that point it's public I did this for the previous appointment as well for the directors HR director of job I feel like it's important for us to put the spin on it I always say it's subject to approval by the town council or review by the town council and I think the press actually accurately reported that as well the I think it's more responsible to be communicating to the press versus waiting thinking they're gonna pick it up also it's important for the applicant to know that it's going public because once it goes into the clerk's office you know you don't know who's going to pick it up and their employers need to know that you know I always communicate with the person who is applying so they know that they've done all their due diligence at home I don't know I mean I would I guess if we don't do it then there's going to be an article in the paper that has no information other than what's already been written in the in the transfer memo I don't think that that's responsible follow up questions or comments on this George I think the sense for some members not this member but for some members was that when this goes to the press like this it sort of puts us in a more difficult position or awkward position and in regards to saying no I don't really personally think that way but that was I think a sense of some and you just explained why in fact it's perfectly reasonable to do this that makes sense to do this and now it's our turn to our job and so I understand how that yes you could feel that way about that I think assume that it's in the press one way or the other right and that's going to be the case because when there are vacancies the press asks me all the time what's going on what's going on what's going on and I'm not going to say I'll say I was been referred to the council they're going to go and read what's been referred they understand how the system works and anybody in the press would do that and then I prefer to you know ask me you know I don't this does not preclude the council taking action you're going to have to you have a name in front of you it's on your agenda the only question now is whether it's been in the paper in advance or not so in order for the council to say no you're going to have to say no I don't want this person who's been named so I guess I'm not really sure where that the line is on that so those are all of the questions and comments I had written down from our discussion is there any that I missed or new questions that came up in your mind during this discussion Alyssa if I could just follow up on that yeah we did go around quite a bit on what that meant and I totally appreciate the idea that you might as well spin it for the press the way you want to spin it rather than just letting them pick up scraps from other places because they're going to write something no matter what and it does put an onus on us to have it be awkward for us to say no and perhaps that's reasonable given the way the charter's written given the authority that the town manager has there better be something pretty significant in order for the town council to say no we did talk about the fact that people's employers have been advised but also it's an opportunity for the public to really see it as opposed to the public necessarily looking for our packets 48 hours ahead of time which the vast majority of humans do not do but might see the press release might subscribe to press releases and therefore could give us input as a town council you know whether it's offline or publicly to say oh I know that person and that person's going to be amazing or vice versa and that that has some value too even though it is of course awkward always for us to say no but that is the position we're put in but I still come back to the fact that one of the ongoing conversations we'll have here and that we hope to engage you in is that we we have to have a reason to say yes but yes and or no and it can't just be well if something egregious happens well like what I mean the example you gave was totally you know in terms of uh we know that's your that's your you know uncle and we know he's not qualified why we would know that I don't know but somebody told us that and for us to be able we'd like to be able to say yes enthusiastically rather than yes because we can't think of a reason to say no and so being able to potentially have a conversation one it is a department head because obviously we don't talk about this for any of your other hires but you talk about it at budget time or you know goals time but to talk about you know I I want to bring the town council along so they understand where I'm going with this and then when I write that final memo it will all be really obvious to them how we got there as opposed to just telling us in a town manager report I'm working on it and then saying and here it's done I mean those are not bad things I've just fine trying to find ways for people to feel more included in it even though it's entirely your decision and then we have no obvious reason and we don't want to express uneasiness about somebody just because we don't understand our role as opposed to uneasiness because there's actually something that concerns us about the process and while I appreciate you saying that it's not necessarily up to the town council to make sure that things got posted it's not clear to me that it's up to anyone to know that and so for me to feel like I have the ability to say yes we followed the rules to the extent I know about them I'm not a human resources professional I'm not the police chief I'm assuming you're doing those things some town managers and some towns aren't they aren't doing the right things that they're supposed to be doing they're telling their people that they hired people under certain circumstances and find out later they didn't they didn't follow the rules there's no way to find that out from a memo that's written to us but the things we do know about it feels like we can then say hey look there were 28 people here's some demographics hey look they advertised it beyond just western massachusetts white directors of senior centers great you know and then we can all feel like yay we're doing a wonderful thing here rather than expressing reservations about things and there's tons of things we'll just never know about and that's okay but some things we could know more about so that we could be more enthusiastic rather than just I guess so so I would say that if I have a department head in front of the council specifically oka I would expect you to want to talk to me about it and have me on the agenda and say tell me about this person why did you choose that all the questions you already posed I think that's a totally responsible thing to do and I would welcome that so I would hope that that would continue with other department heads I would I would find it challenging to try to I would hesitate to put in writing a lot of things that I might want to engage with you in as a conversation as opposed to a written appointment document um but I think you might have questions that I had not anticipated and would be willing I think it's a really useful conversation I have and I think that would help with you to understand what your due diligence is in in the appointment but if I were in your shoes I would want to meet with the town major say tell me about this person you're pointing and why you chose them and tell me more about the process what worked what didn't work those are all totally rational things to be concerned about I think it's a little bit different with the boards and committees because there are so many we I mean we treat them a little bit differently there's a longer time frame for conversation for them typically you know we don't do the press releases and all that stuff for that you know I think there's a need for that necessarily but but I think for department heads it's a different it's a short time frame having a face-to-face conversation would be very useful any final comments or questions for the town manager do we have questions while town managers here do we have questions on board of health by which I mean I know we had questions on board of health so does anyone want to ask questions on board of health or give comments so I'll just preface it by saying it got filed today because when I July has 31 days so in order to be able to meet either tonight's meeting or the august 19th meeting I had to file it today I couldn't file it Friday so I sent you a draft in advance so you had a little bit of time to look at it but the official filing happened today so the clock starts ticking today so I understand that it's a short if you can't act on it I totally understand that if you feel like you can then they'll move forward I think they can survive with the with who they have if you can if you feel like that's too rushed Alyssa there was some sense although we did not even come close to taking a straw boat there was some sense that we're not going to learn anything between now and the next meeting anyway so what's the difference especially since we knew you could be here today because that did come up as being an important part of this process just like you said so see what's clear one of the things that came up in terms of the memo content was again the idea of an ongoing conversation we need to have about and I appreciate what you just mentioned about certain things you know they're like more visionary and direction that you're not necessarily going to put in the appointment memo but and they are also kind of an evolving concept but in the appointment memo one of the things we've asked about previously and is not really covered in here and so we perhaps need to come up with a more specific way of asking for it is that the reappointment aside from the disagreement on this committee as to whether or not reappointments need to be interviewed again which is a different issue because obviously that's your choice is understanding what the reappointment people bring to the table and so just saying they've been there doesn't feel like enough we'd like and we you know this goes off into our whole conversation about what the CAF does what our process looks like for appointments I mean so it's a longer conversation but seeing that reminded us that we're going to have that we want to have that longer conversation but with ourselves about your appointments but also with ourselves about our appointments as to what it is we want to see on these recommendations to feel like we understand oh and this person represents a particular constituency where this rep person represents somebody who can write well or helped bring a lot of people to a forum about a particular hot button issue that was really valuable to get public engagement on rather than just this person's been there for three years so that's a conversation we're having I think you know continually and will be part of our future conversation both with ourselves and with the town council but in the meantime if you felt like you can't anything else to your memos I think that would not go amiss at this point in terms of we're not trying to just get you to write pages and pages but to understand what people are bringing just like you do with new people when you write oh well that's why this person's interesting and exciting it's like well why is the current person still interesting and exciting particularly since they're not getting interviewed is the kind of is the question I and it wasn't even really a question because I'm obviously fine with the people you've brought forward because we have no reason to believe they aren't fine it would just be helpful I think to us into the full town council to have more information so two reactions to that one is a lot of times we're in a recruitment mode as opposed to choosing people and so we're hoping that people will continue to serve and we're not trying to find reasons to not encourage them to serve the second is I don't really have the capacity to evaluate a member's role on a committee really in a deep way that if that's what the expectation is I would render judgment on how well they're performing in their roles that's I don't really do that if someone's on the shade tree committee they've been on for three years and are coming back up for a three-year term I'm not unless they're not showing up which is something that we do pay attention to if someone's not fulfilling their duty to be present I don't go and look at their votes or see what their content of the quality of their contributions are I'm assuming that people who volunteer are there for a reason I mean I think you know I did add the additional information that you've requested in terms of who is this person that's being reappointed so that's been added to it but in terms of more detail about what they how how they're contributing to the existing board without doing a lot of research into that for each appointment I just find that to be would be a high standard I think as opposed to welcoming people into the government who want to participate and thank them for for serving for the two terms that they're offered George I feel this is the point where I can cite an authority I often turn to in matters of great difficulty it was Woody Allen who said many years ago that 90% of life is just showing up the endorsing polls point at least from my perspective if you have someone you're hearing this Paul not maybe that first time but anyway someone has served for three years on a committee and there's no obvious issues I would final questions or comments for the town manager Darcy I just want to comment that one applicant who if you on an initial look you might think that he doesn't his qualifications aren't related at all to the board of health but I'm hoping that the reason that Timothy Randier is being recommended is because there's an acknowledgement of the connection between environmental issues and climate issues and health so the board of health has a very broad mandate I think that's why I added the additional material to let you understand that it's not just health it's also they look at wells they have to permit wells they do a lot with do a lot with hydrology they do drinking water there Julie Fetterman health directors at the forefront have led in the water and so having a second hydrologist on the on the committee in anticipation of a potential term and termed out person next year was seemed to be in Professor Tobiason who I'm not sure if he's he's a super person to have on the committee but having some backup for him was seen as being an important value for this so that's a that's a you know the board of health has such a it's the most powerful you know legal wise board in the in the town they have more legal authority than almost any other board so and it's very broad which includes you know water and you know keeping pools open and all kinds of things like that I think that comes around a little bit to the discussion this committee's been having for months now about what we're looking for in appointee profiles I think one of it is what in some of these where that connection might not be immediate like a sentence that just says why because some of its professional credentials or academic background often are impressive in this town but don't necessarily give an idea of what they bring to the committee and I had the same immediate thought I start I know Tim reindeer here's my graduate advisor so I know him I know him very well but my first thought was why and then I scrolled that I'm thankfully you attached to those materials I scrolled down and I saw you know septic installations first and I went okay that makes sense then and so but I wouldn't have known that had I not scrolled down right and so just in those profiles sometimes it's not just about what they do professionally but why that matters to a committee and you've done that in a couple of your profiles there was there was one where you talked about some of its professional credentials but then you also said this means she has this research experience and that's going to be really useful because this committee is about to do this and it was it was so clear so one of the things I struggle with is that it's easy to default to professional credentials and that's not what we want all of our committees to be filled with and I think it's hard to not have people who have I mean this this town is full of people who have really high value research expertise in certain areas but we also want regular people who just use that term who and you know doing a profile of someone who has common sense and can listen to an argument and make a rational response is really important you know what I would put into a profile without demeaning someone I don't know exactly how I try to bring their body of work to it and having interest is a key feature of it but because I think that and you know there will be people who won't have particular expertise in a field that we will want to have serve on committees so yeah so what you're saying is tell us why you chose this person not just their background yeah that's I think exactly okay right for what you just said exactly exactly yeah all right well at that I'd like to let the town manager get back to his job this is my job well all right go away and you Alyssa so uh can you do a demographics thing for council tonight just give it to us tonight that'd be cool okay so with that I am going to entertain a motion that Oka recommend town council approve the town manager appointment of Mary Beth Oglewicks as the director of senior services is there a second I would Sarah George wanted the motion so the motion was made by Alyssa it was seconded by Sarah is there any further discussion Alyssa motion is our second is there any further discussion all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye and that's unanimous may I make a motion go ahead George like to move that Oka recommend the town managers appointments to the board of health which would be Stephen George reappointment for a three-year term Maureen Malaya and Timothy Randier for two-year terms motion's been made is there a second Sarah discussion Alyssa um I think we still struggle with our motions because our motions are different than they used to be but I would say it's to recommend the town council approve I didn't say that you didn't know would you accept that as a friendly amendment yes thank you George I'll memorize it one of these days is is there any further discussion on town manager appointments to board of health okay motion's been made in seconded all those in favor raise your hand say aye aye all right that's unanimous so the one other the I know we needed it's been a long meeting last thing I just want to go over is the plan for tonight so Oka will be called upon to speak at least twice in tonight's meeting one will be regarding the non-voting resident members of the finance committee Darcy wrote and filed that report thank you for doing that Darcy my expectation is that when that when Oka is called for report or comment on that I will defer to Darcy to deliver the report um of course at any moment any member not any moment when Darcy finishes other members of Oka are welcome to chime in but my expectation which I assume is also your expectation is that you'll deliver the report on that tonight the second time is regarding director of senior services my plan is to give a report then my expectation was to provide an oral report because it would be very difficult to write a report between now and 6 30 and I don't know that anyone would read it but I will do my best to capture all my scribbles on this page are there any questions or comments on the the reports for tonight Darcy I just have one comment and that is um I think that we need to streamline our procedure a little bit in that um I don't think we need to submit a 24 page report on each appointment maybe we can have a separate document that has sort of the boilerplate I mean I know that there's a lot of things that change on each appointment but it seems a bit much to be submitting that much information um and I'm wondering if people are actually reading the whole thing so just to just something for us to consider in the future it seems like we're kind of going overboard on some of this stuff any other final thoughts or comments before we adjourn Alyssa I would just like that when the discussion takes place about the finance committee members that we not that we refrain from using not that we refrain from using but that we refrain from using the concept of a minority report and just refer to the differing opinions on various issues okay final comments Alyssa um so final comments before we adjourn or final comments on that topic yes so is it my understanding that tonight when we're talking about the zoning bylaw the zoning bylaw which of course Ocas had no direct involvement in just as town counselors but the it still says four associate members for ZBA but we only appointed three associate members for ZBA is that in fact correct and of the reason I don't know that for absolute certain is because of course the board and committee list that's on the town website is out of date it's from May 9th but the webpage has been updated to show three and it's counting four as a vacancy but I didn't think I thought we intended to just do three and we did three whereas the bylaw that we'll be looking at tonight says four even though we had no intention of doing four and so we should just be clear on that because tonight when a town counselor says but I thought we only had three ZBA or vice versa so I'll have to go back and take a look but we filled the number of people that the ZBA the chair of the ZBA told us that he wanted which was three and not four right which I was just making sure we all agreed that that was how we remembered it because the reality is the zoning bylaw that we're looking at tonight completely irrespective of what was reported today at public comment says four which does not mean we're necessarily arguably obligated to fill all four but what I'm trying to get at now that we've heard that public comment in addition is either one we should be telling the town council to change it to three if we believe three is the right number or are we comfortable with the fact that it says four and we may or may not fill that fourth position at any time in the near future I guess I don't since I don't know where the disconnect happens speaking of someone who also happens to serve on bylaw review why it is that the zoning section that we're bringing forward on the ZBA still says four when we all knew internally right that it changed to three and it says that in our report that that's what the ZBA because the number right it was because the other number changed from three to five we were changing the associate number from four to three at the recommendation of the ZBA I get all that but what I'm trying to get at is I think maybe we're better off to leave it alone in the zoning bylaw tonight rather than trying to quick change it to three because then we just don't then we can have that conversation later and the town council can say which if it hadn't been me bringing it up now maybe nobody would have brought it up but if any of you have strong feelings that we need to change it from four to three in the bylaw tonight then we should know that now the other part is that because we were told three we could report that we were told three that's why we gave them three fours there as a maximum and someday maybe we'll appoint four and someday maybe we won't so speaking as also a member of bylaw review I remember we were very the original one said zoning board of appeal because it consists of three members and four associate members which said that has to implies there's four and if there's not four then there's a vacancy that was changed in bylaw review to the zoning board of appeals may include up to four with the understanding that we were only going to put in three and that doesn't mean there's a vacancy it means we could do up to four and we're going to which means we could in theory do one two three or four and we decided to do four so I don't I there are three I don't think it requires any type of change and I don't think it implies that OKA didn't do its job it just means we had up to four and we only chose to do three because that's what we heard so I don't I don't feel like there's actually a conflict because I remember we put may include may include up to which was very intentionally something that came from you and I on bylaw review because it happened just after we had submitted our zba and we thought hold on it can't say that because that's not what we just did exactly so I think we should we're all clear on that since we just had that brought up to us we don't know if that's going to get brought up tonight the town council at public comment which could just confuse things when it comes to the zoning bylaw issue tonight at town council and you said it so well it doesn't mean that there's a vacancy but the bylaw gives us the ability to go up to four right we did not take that ability based on the recommendation of the zba chair at that time we did three and we didn't say and oh that leaves us a vacancy because we weren't looking right we don't perceive it to be a vacancy exactly so so in case this becomes an issue do you want me to make sure that I have all of the emails that I have from Lynn asking mark parent how many people he felt should be for associate do you need me back up on that or are we just fine with it because it was it was definitely more than verbal it was expressly written so in case that comes up I'm not I'm just saying I got it if you have easy access to that email it won't be easy but I absolutely do yep just in case we the public commenter from today yeah also the meeting tonight because that may very quickly become a conversation of should we use up that fourth spot yeah and so I'll have I have a lot of documentation on whether or not they wanted three or four officially so I'll make sure that I have that okay available to you I'll put it in our meeting and I can just send it to you final comments uh august 12th all right then with that I will adjourn the meeting at 12 14 p.m